This invention relates to a data processing system and, more particularly, to a data processing system capable of retrieving relational data from a relational data memory and visually representing the retrieved data on a display unit.
In the data processing system such as electronic typewriters or word processors executing a spelling check function and/or a synonym retrieval function, it is customary that a proper candidate or synonym for an input word is visually represented in a fixed area on a display unit. However, depending on the input word, there exist great differences among the quantities of relational data to be displayed. Therefore, the data processing system of this type is conventionally so contrived that, when the data is great in quantity and cannot be completely represented within the fixed display area, generally the display screen is scrolled or switched by manipulating a cursor key or the like, which raising a problem of intricate operation.
On the other hand, there are also known some data processing system equipped with a liquid crystal or CRT display unit having a sufficiently large display area. With the data processing system of this type, however, when the data is merely small in quantity, a wide blank region is inevitable on the display screen without effective use, and consequently the edit screen area is rendered smaller to deteriorate the display utilization efficiency.